Theories of picture perception aim to understand our perceptual relation to both the picture surface and the depicted object. I argue that we should talk about not two, but three entities when understanding picture perception: the picture surface, the three dimensional object the picture surface visually encodes and the three dimensional depicted object. As and can come apart, we get a more complex picture of picture perception than normally assumed and one where the notion of twofoldness, which has played an (...) important albeit controversial role in understanding picture perception is replaced by the concept of threefoldness. (shrink)

This article outlines the potential for Research Higher Degree supervisors at universities and similar institutions to use ethical review as a constructive, dynamic tool in guiding RHD students in the timely completion of effective, innovative research projects. Ethical review involves a bureaucratized process for checking that researchers apply risk management strategies when dealing with human participants. Ethical review can also be a powerful instrument for RHD supervisors in the creative arts if they use it to lead students through processes of (...) imagining, articulating, and improving their methodologies and relationships with research participants. Proposed strategies involve adaptation of theories of visualization and imagination from several disciplines—imagined interaction from the social sciences and psychology, dramatic rehearsal from political science, and creative visualization from the health professions, sports coaching and many other personal–professional development contexts. By using creativity and imagination, supervisors can use ethical review to help students to ‘walk through’ the potential, progressive phases of proposed research in order to refine or redesign both ‘big picture’ strategies and specific steps taken to reach research goals. This can stimulate students to unearth possibilities that improve the quality and quantity of knowledge that their research generates and to avoid or manage problems that might disrupt their research. (shrink)

This paper reports on the Kuhnian revolution now occurring in neuropsychology that is finally supportive of and friendly to phenomenology — the "enactive" approach to the mind-body relation, grounded in the notion of self-organization, which is consistent with Husserl and Merleau-Ponty on virtually every point. According to the enactive approach, human minds understand the world by virtue of the ways our bodies can act relative to it, or the ways we can imagine acting. This requires that action be distinguished from (...) passivity, that the mental be approached from a first person perspective, and that the cognitive capacities of the brain be grounded in the emotional and motivational processes that guide action and anticipate action affordances. It avoids the old intractable problems inherent in the computationalist approaches of twentieth century atomism and radical empiricism, and again allows phenomenology to bridge to neuropsychology in the way Merleau-Ponty was already doing over half a century ago. (shrink)

The present work shows the existence of systematic individual differences in change blindness. It can be concluded that the sensitivity for changes is a trait. That is, persons differ in their ability to detect changes, independent from the situation or the measurement method. Moreover, there are two explanations for individual differences in change blindness: a) capacity differences in visual selective attention that may be influenced by top-down activated attention helping to focus attention onto relevant stimuli b) differences in working memory (...) capacity or in decision making. In accordance with this, age-related individual differences in the sensitivity for changes can be explained by attentional processes and by confidence in the own ratings. Together, the present work might form the basis for a more application-oriented research on individual differences in change blindness and its underlying processes. (shrink)

Perceptual load plays a critical role in identification and awareness of stimuli. Given the differences in emotion–attention interactions, we investigated the perception of distractor emotional faces in two different load conditions under divided attention with a task based on the inattentional blindness paradigm. Participants performed a low- or high-load task with a string of letters presented against a happy, sad or neutral face (in a circular form) as the background. Participants were asked to identify the face that appeared in the (...) critical trial. Results indicate an interaction between emotion and load. First, identification of faces with happy expression was better than chance and unaffected by load. Second, performance was worse than chance for faces with sad expression in the high-load condition, indicating inhibition of unattended sad distractor faces in the critical trial. This indicates that inhibitory processes during a difficult attentional task under divided attention influence subsequent perception of distractor stimuli especially sad faces. The results have implications for the theories of selective attention as well as the role of emotions in conscious perception. (shrink)

Object identification via a perceptual-demonstrative mode of presentation has been studied in cognitive science as a particularly direct and context-dependent means of identifying objects. Several recent works in cognitive science have attempted to clarify the relation between attention, demonstrative identification and context exploration. Assuming a distinction between ‘ demonstrative reference' and ‘perceptual-demonstrative identification', this article aims at specifying the role of attention in the latter and in the linking of conceptual and non conceptual contents while exploring a spatial context. First, (...) the analysis presents an argument to the effect that selection by overt and covert attention is needed for perceptual-demonstrative identification since overt/covert selective attention is required for the situated cognitive access to the target object. Second, it describes a hypothesis that makes explicit some of the roles of attention: the hypothesis of identification by epistemic attention via the control of perceptual routines. (shrink)

Embodied cognitive science holds that cognitive processes are deeply and inescapably rooted in our bodily interactions with the world. Our finite, contingent, and mortal embodiment may be not only supportive, but in some cases even constitutive of emotions, thoughts, and experiences. My discussion here will work outward from the neuroanatomy and neurophysiology of the brain to a nervous system which extends to the boundaries of the body. It will extend to nonneural aspects of embodiment and even beyond the boundaries of (...) the body to prosthetics of various kinds, including symbioses with a broad array of cultural artifacts, our symbolic niche, and our relationships with other embodied human beings. While cognition may not always be situated, its origins are embedded in temporally and spatially limited activities. Cognitive work also can be off-loaded to the body and to the environment in service of action, tool use, group cognition, and social coordination. This can blur the boundaries between brain areas, brain and body, and body and environment, transforming our understanding of mind and personhood to provide a different grounding for faith traditions in general, and of the historically dualist Christian tradition in particular. (shrink)

Event-related potential studies have attempted to discover the processes that underlie conscious visual perception by contrasting ERPs produced by stimuli that are consciously perceived with those that are not. Variability of the proposed ERP correlates of consciousness is considerable: the earliest proposed ERP correlate of consciousness coincides with sensory processes and the last one marks postperceptual processes. A negative difference wave called visual awareness negativity , typically observed around 200 ms after stimulus onset in occipitotemporal sites, gains strong support for (...) reflecting the processes that correlate with, and possibly enable, aware visual perception. Research suggests that the early parts of conscious processing can proceed independently of top-down attention, although top-down attention may modulate visual processing even before consciousness. Evidence implies that the contents of consciousness are provided by interactions in the ventral stream, but indispensable contributions from dorsal regions influence already low-level visual responses. (shrink)

ObjectiveWe argue that people often fail to perceive and process stimuli easily available to them. In other words, we challenge the tacit assumption that awareness is unbounded and provide evidence that humans regularly fail to see and use stimuli and information easily available to them. We call this phenomenon “bounded awareness” (Bazerman and Chugh in Frontiers of social psychology: negotiations, Psychology Press: College Park 2005). Findings We begin by first describing perceptual mental processes in which obvious information is missed—that is, (...) simply not seen—by the visual perceiver. Inattentional blindness and change blindness are examples. We then extend this phenomenon to decision making and forecasting, using evidence about focalism to illustrate how people over focus on some information and fail to use other easily available information. We next examine how these processes of bounded awareness may extend to other important domains and across levels of analysis, such as information-sharing in groups, decision making in negotiators, and in competitive bidding situations such as auctions.ConclusionsBounded awareness is a phenomenon that encompasses a variety of psychological processes, all of which lead to the same error: a failure to see, seek, use, or share important and relevant information that is easily seen, sought, used, or shared. (shrink)

This thesis aims to develop a psychologically plausible account of concepts by integrating key insights from philosophy (on the metaphysical basis for concept possession) and psychology (on the mechanisms underlying concept acquisition). I adopt an approach known as informational atomism, developed by Jerry Fodor. Informational atomism is the conjunction of two theses: (i) informational semantics, according to which conceptual content is constituted exhaustively by nomological mind–world relations; and (ii) conceptual atomism, according to which (lexical) concepts have no internal structure. I (...) argue that informational semantics needs to be supplemented by allowing content-constitutive rules of inference (“meaning postulates”). This is because the content of one important class of concepts, the logical terms, is not plausibly informational. And since, it is argued, no principled distinction can be drawn between logical concepts and the rest, the problem that this raises is a general one. An immediate difficulty is that Quine’s classic arguments against the analytic/synthetic distinction suggest that there can be no principled basis for distinguishing content-constitutive rules from the rest. I show that this concern can be overcome by taking a psychological approach: there is a fact of the matter as to whether or not a particular inference is governed by a mentally-represented inference rule, albeit one that analytic philosophy does not have the resources to determine. I then consider the implications of this approach for concept acquisition. One mechanism underlying concept acquisition is the development of perceptual detectors for the objects that we encounter. I investigate how this might work, by drawing on recent ideas in ethology on ‘learning instincts’, and recent insights into the neurological basis for perceptual learning. What emerges is a view of concept acquisition as involving a complex interplay between innate constraints and environmental input. This supports Fodor’s recent move away from radical concept nativism: concept acquisition requires innate mechanisms, but does not require that concepts themselves be innate. (shrink)

Eyewitnesses are often susceptible to recollection failures and memory distortions. These failures and distortions are influenced by several factors. The present review will discuss two such important factors, attention failures and stress. We argue that acute stress, often experienced by eyewitnesses and victims of crimes, directly influences attentional processes, which likely has downstream consequences for memory. Attentional failures may result in individuals missing something unusual or important in a complex visual field. Amongst eyewitnesses, this can lead to individuals missing details, (...) even unusual or important central details, regarding the crime. Surprisingly, few studies have investigated attentional failures in eyewitness scenarios, and none have investigated the relationship between stress, attention, and witness memory. This review will discuss the impact of attentional failures, mainly those resulting from inattentional blindness, in applied contexts in order to bridge to eyewitness scenarios. In addition, we will integrate the applied literature on attentional failures with literature that examines the influences of arousal and stress on attention. We will conclude by presenting how future research may tease apart the independent contributions of arousal and stress on attentional failures and successes and how this research may inform understanding of eyewitness reliability. (shrink)

This paper explores whether consciousness can exist without attention. This is a hot topic in philosophy of mind and cognitive science due to the popularity of theories that hold attention to be necessary for consciousness. The discovery of a form of consciousness that exists without the influence of attention would require a change in the way that many global workspace theorists, for example, understand the role and function of consciousness. Against this understanding, at least three forms of consciousness have been (...) argued to exist without attention: perceptual gist, imagistic consciousness, and phenomenal consciousness. After first arguing that the evidence is inconclusive on the question of whether these forms of consciousness exist without attention, I here present a fourth form of consciousness that is likely to be more successful: conscious entrainment. I argue that conscious entrainment is a form of consciousness associated with skilled behavior in which attention is sometimes absent. (shrink)

This article is devoted to the description of the experience associated with listening to a sound. In the first part, we describe the method we used to gather descriptions of auditory experience and to analyse these descriptions. This work of explicitation and analysis has enabled us to identify a threefold generic structure of this experience, depending on whether the attention of the subject is directed towards the event which is at the source of the sound, the sound in itself, considered (...) independently from its source, the felt sound. In the second part of the article, we describe this structure. The third part is devoted to a discussion of these results and the paths they open up in various fields of theoretical and applied research. (shrink)

From a historico-cultural point of view the notion of normativity is closely tied to the apparently descriptive category of normality. This relation seems even tighter on the level of experience. As Husserl shows that normality, in the form of concordance and optimality, is a constitutive feature of experience itself. But in what sense can we speak of normativity in the realm of experience? Husserl himself saw no need to pose this question. But to explain the possibility of normal and coherent (...) perception one needs more than merely formal criteria (like concordance and its adjustment to an optimum): one must also take into account the attentional nature of perception. In this regard, the present paper will consider Husserl’s early treatment of attention and integrate it with its genetic implications on the level of affection. Doing so shows that subjective experience is characterized by a preference- structure, motivated by the embodied subject’s individual and cultural horizons of interest. It is this that allows one to speak of a precursor to normativity in the realm of experience. Moreover it can be argued that interest not only influences perception from the lowest level, but can be seen as a precondition for any current attention. Thus to speak of normativity in experience in this stronger sense, means not only that perception already contains traces of intersubjective norms; it also means that such norms determine what you can see at all. --------------------------------------------------------------------------Aus kulturgeschichtlicher Perspektive steht der Begriff Normativität in einer engen Verbindung mit der vermeintlich deskriptiven Kategorie der Normalität. Erweist sich diese Relation aber bereits auf der Ebene der sinnlichen Erfahrung als grundlegend, hat dies weitreichende Konsequenzen. Wie Husserl zeigt, ist Normalität im Sinne der formalen Kriterien von Einstimmigkeit und Optimalität selbst konstitutiv für jede Erfahrung. Um darüber hinaus die Normativität innerhalb der Erfahrung in den Blick zu bekommen, soll in diesem Beitrag die phänomenologische Beschreibung um einen wichtigen Aspekt ergänzt werden: die Aufmerksamkeit. Zu den formalen Normalitätskriterien muss eine konkrete subjektive Präferenz hinzu treten, die eine Differenzierung der Wahrnehmungsinhalte leistet. Anders lässt sich eine normale und kohärente Erfahrung nicht hinreichend erklären. Husserls frühe Arbeiten zur Aufmerksamkeit und Intentionalität sollen daher mit späteren genetischen Analysen zu einer umfassenderen Konzeption von Aufmerksamkeit verbunden werden. Hierbei wird deutlich, dass jede subjektive Erfahrung durch ihre präferenzielle Struktur charakterisiert ist, die sowohl von individuellen als auch kulturellen Interessenshorizonten des leiblichen Subjekts motiviert ist. Dies erlaubt es, von einer rudimentären Form der Normativität innerhalb der Erfahrung zu sprechen. Diese immer schon intersubjektiven Interessensdimensionen beeinflussen weiterhin jedes Aufmerksamkeitsverhalten von den untersten Stufen der Wahrnehmung bis hin zu höheren Geistesakten. Normativität in einem starken Sinne meint damit nicht nur, dass sich die Spuren intersubjektiver Normen bereits innerhalb der Wahrnehmung finden lassen. Vielmehr bestimmen diese Normen, was wir im Einzelfall überhaupt sehen können. (shrink)

Evidence from many different paradigms (e.g. change blindness, inattentional blindness, transsaccadic integration) indicate that observers are often very poor at reporting changes to their visual environment. Such evidence has been used to suggest that the spatio-temporal coherence needed to represent change can only occur in the presence of focused attention. In four experiments we use modified change blindness tasks to demonstrate (a) that sensitivity to change does occur in the absence of awareness, and (b) this sensitivity does not rely on (...) the redeploy- ment of attention. We discuss these results in relation to theories of scene percep- tion, and propose a reinterpretatio n of the role of attention in representing change. (shrink)

In the cognitive neuroscience of consciousness, participants have commonly been instructed to report their conscious content. This, it was claimed, risks confounding the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) with their preconditions, i.e., allocation of attention, and consequences, i.e., metacognitive reflection. Recently, the field has therefore been shifting towards no-report paradigms. No-report paradigms draw their validity from a direct comparison with no-report conditions. We analyze several examples of such comparisons and identify alternative interpretations of their results and/or methodological issues in all (...) cases. These go beyond the previous criticism that just removing the report is insufficient, because it does not prevent metacognitive reflection. The conscious mind is fickle. Without having much to do, it will turn inward and switch, or timeshare, between the stimuli on display and daydreaming or mind-wandering. Thus, rather than the NCC, no-report paradigms might be addressing the neural correlates of conscious disengagement. This observation reaffirms the conclusion that no-report paradigms are no less problematic than report paradigms. (shrink)

We are aware of those parts of a cat that are occluded behind a fence. The question is how we represent these occluded parts of perceived objects: this is the problem of amodal perception. I will consider four theories and compare their explanatory power: (i) we see them, (ii) we have nonperceptual beliefs about them, (iii) we have immediate perceptual access to them and (iv) we visualize them. I point out that the first three of these views face both empirical (...) and conceptual objections. I argue for the fourth account, according to which we visualize the occluded parts of perceived objects. Finally, I consider some important consequences of this view with regards to the content and the evolution of visualization. (shrink)

The attempt to model the structure of consciousness in split-brain subjects is ongoing. This paper concerns the recently proposed ?switch model? of split-brain consciousness, according to which a split-brain subject possesses only a single stream of consciousness, unified at and across time, that shifts from one hemisphere to the other from moment to moment. The paper argues that while the central explanatory element of the switch model may account for some aspects of split-brain consciousness, the best general picture of split-brain (...) consciousness is still offered by some version of the ?conscious duality model.? (shrink)

According to John McDowell and Bill Brewer, our experiences have the type of content which can be the content of judgements - content which is the result of the actualization of specific conceptual abilities. They defend this view by arguing that our experiences must have such content in order for us to be able to think about our environment. In this paper I show that they do not provide a conclusive argument for this view. Focusing on Brewer’s version of the (...) argument, I show that it rests on a questionable assumption - namely, that if a subject can recognize the normative bearing of a mental content upon what she should think and do, then this content must be the result of the actualization of conceptual capacities (and in this sense conceptual). I argue that considerations regarding the roles played by experience and concepts in our mental lives may require us to reject this assumption. (shrink)

The work of Alan Cowey and Petra Stoerig is often taken to have shown that, following lesions analogous to those that cause blindsight in humans, there is blindsight in monkeys. The present paper reveals a problem in Cowey and Stoerig's case for blindsight in monkeys. The problem is that Cowey and Stoerig's results would only provide good evidence for blindsight if there is no difference between their two experimental paradigms with regard to the sorts of stimuli that are likely to (...) come to consciousness. We show that the paradigms could differ in this respect, given the connections that have been shown to exist between working memory, perceptual load, attention, and consciousness. (shrink)

The authors report "priming" effects for subjects they classify as "inattentionally blind" and interpret this as evidence for unconscious perception--an interpretation consistent with deeply entrenched metatheory. I question that interpretation, however, on methodological grounds. On these assessment procedures, some subjects could be classified as "inattentionally blind" despite representing the critical stimulus in conscious attention. Still others--presenting a more interesting challenge--could be so classified despite representing the stimulus literally in inattentional awareness. The study is illuminated, I believe, by seeing it in (...) metatheoretical and experimental contexts, with its theoretical interpretation contrasted with an alternative. (shrink)

Mack and Rock show evidence that no consciousperception occurs without a prior attentiveact. Subjects already executing attention taskstend to neglect visible elements extraneous tothe attentional task, apparently lacking evenbetter-than-chance ``implicit perception,''except in certain cases where the unattendedstimulus is a meaningful word or has uniquepre-tuned salience similar to that ofmeaningful words. This is highly consistentwith ``enactive'' notions that consciousnessrequires selective attention via emotional subcortical and limbic motivationalactivation as it influences anterior attentionmechanisms. Occipital activation withoutconsciousness suggests that motivated search,enacted through the organism's (...) subcorticalmotivational functions, is needed beforevisual stimulation engenders consciousness.This enactive view – that searching for,rather than receiving or processing input isthe basis of consciousness – was slow ingaining acceptance lacking empirical evidenceof this kind, combined with thestimulus-response assumption that brain eventssubserving perceptual consciousness must resultfrom transformation of perceptual input ratherthan from the organism's self-regulatedactivity as manifested through subcorticalactivity. Implicit perception occurring withword priming is ``paradoxical'' according to Mackand Rock, suggesting late selection forattention after extensive unconsciousprocessing, while most trials involvingnonverbal rather than verbal images mightsuggest earlier selection, sinceunattended objects are unseen, apparently evenimplicitly. This paper argues that anteriorand subcortical motivational mechanisms play animportant role in early selection; posteriormechanisms then unconsciously enhance signals;if data survive early gating andcorticothalamic enhancement, then still further anterior-limbic loops motivatedlyactivate ``image schemas'' resonating withposterior nonconscious processing; at thatpoint, consciousness occurs. (shrink)

Off-seat behaviour refers to students leaving their seats and walking out of a classroom without the teacher noticing. This behaviour occurs in special education for students with certain special needs, which would lead to serious safety problems. This study carried out an inattentional blindness test to explore whether the location of seats in classrooms would impact teachers’ detection rate regarding off-seat behaviours. The participants were 126 pre-service teachers who were invited to perform the primary task of counting students raising their (...) hands up whilst the disappearance of one of the students was introduced as an unexpected occurrence. The results show that peripheral seats were more detectable than the central ones for the teachers to notice the “missing student.” Meanwhile, the left and below oriented seats were more likely to be ignored compared to those that were right and upper oriented. These results suggest the existence of a location effect in the classroom that is associated with teachers’ attention regarding off-seat behaviour. This study has implications for classroom management in terms of arranging students’ seats appropriately to assist in increasing teachers’ identification of this hazard. (shrink)

Problems are raised with the global workspace hypothesis of consciousness, for example about exactly how global the workspace needs to be for consciousness to suddenly be present. Problems are also raised with Carruthers's version that excludes conceptual representations, and in which phenomenal consciousness can be reduced to physical processes, with instead a different levels of explanation approach to the relation between the brain and the mind advocated. A different theory of phenomenal consciousness is described, in which there is a particular (...) computational system involved in which Higher Order Syntactic Thoughts are used to perform credit assignment on first order thoughts of multiple step plans to correct them by manipulating symbols in a syntactic type of working memory. This provides a good evolutionary reason for the evolution of this kind of computational module, with which, it is proposed, phenomenal consciousness is associated. Some advantages of this HOST approach to phenomenal consciousness are then described with reference not only to the global workspace approach, but also to Higher Order Thought theories. It is hypothesized that the HOST system which requires the ability to manipulate first order symbols in working memory might utilize parts of the prefrontal cortex implicated in working memory, and especially the left inferior frontal gyrus, which is involved in language and probably syntactical processing. Overall, the approach advocated is to identify the computations that are linked to consciousness, and to analyze the neural bases of those computations. [copyright: Copyright © 2020 Rolls.]. (shrink)

To make behavioral choices that are in line with our goals and our moral beliefs, we need to gather and consider information about our current situation. Most information present in our environment is not relevant to the choices we need or would want to make and thus could interfere with our ability to behave in ways that reflect our underlying values. Certain sources of information could even lead us to make choices we later regret, and thus it would be beneficial (...) to be able to ignore that information. Our ability to exert successful self-governance depends on our ability to attend to sources of information that we deem important to our decision-making processes. We generally assume that, at any moment, we have the ability to choose what we pay attention to. However, recent research indicates that what we pay attention to is influenced by our prior experiences, including reward history and past successes and failures, even when we are not aware of this history. Even momentary distractions can cause us to miss or discount information that should have a greater influence on our decisions given our values. Such biases in attention thus raise questions about the degree to which the choices that we make may be poorly informed and not truly reflect our ability to otherwise exert self-governance. (shrink)

Because psychological studies of attention and cognition are most commonly performed within the strict confines of the laboratory or take cognitively impaired patients as subjects, it is difficult to be sure that resultant models of attention adequately account for the phenomenon of effortless attention. The problem is not only that effortless attention is resistant to laboratory study. A further issue is that because the laboratory is the most common way to approach attention, models resulting from such studies are naturally the (...) most widely propagated, these models naturally tend to be biased toward features of attention most amenable to laboratory study, and these models by their implications set the agenda for future study that leads back to the laboratory. In this self-reinforcing system, features of attention not amenable to laboratory study are naturally neglected by researchers. In this chapter, I suggest an alternative model of attention as a heuristic for opening paths to further profitable research. The features of attention emphasized in this model are not new, but the synthesis is novel and sheds some light on issues relevant to the topic of effortless attention. I begin with the five following observations: -/- 1. One naturally pays attention to a task of current interest. 2. There are (at least) two distinct modes of attention—selective and diffuse. 3. Attention is a constantly shifting avenue for the assimilation of information. 4. Information is not forced in from outside but is captured through internal sensitization. 5. Human information processing is fundamentally syntactic. -/- Combining these five observations yields an explanatory model of attention that is not only consistent with the data from the many studies on attention in recent decades but also allows us to investigate the neglected phenomenon of effortless attention. The model relies on the notions of apertures, draw, and syntax and is explicated by addressing each of the above observations in turn. In the final part of the chapter, I explore how the model expands our understanding of effortless attention. (shrink)

This paper reports on the Kuhnian revolution now occurring in neuropsychology that is finally supportive of and friendly to phenomenology – the “enactive” approach to the mind-body relation, grounded in the notion of self-organization, which is consistent with Husserl and Merleau-Ponty on virtually every point. According to the enactive approach, human minds understand the world by virtue of the ways our bodies can act relative to it, or the ways we can imagine acting. This requires that action be distinguished from (...) passivity, that the mental be approached from a first person perspective, and that the cognitive capacities of the brain be grounded in the emotional and motivational processes that guide action and anticipate action affordances. It avoids the old intractable problems inherent in the computationalist approaches of twentieth century atomism and radical empiricism, and again allows phenomenology to bridge to neuropsychology in the way Merleau-Ponty was already doing over half a century ago. (shrink)

To appear in the Cambridge Handbook to Cognitive Science, eds. Ramsey and Frankish.

Glyn Humphreys' research on attention and binding began from feature‐integration theory, which claims that binding together visual features, such as colour and orientation, requires spatially selective attention. Humphreys employed a more inclusive notion of binding and argued, on neuropsychological grounds, for a multi‐stage account of the overall binding process, in which binding together of form elements was followed by two stages of feature binding. Only the second stage of feature binding, a re‐entrant (top‐down) process beginning in posterior parietal cortex and (...) returning to early visual areas, required attention. In line with his commitment to converging evidence, Humphreys considered that investigating the role of attention in motion‐induced blindness could be a route to better understanding of the cognitive role of the attention‐dependent second stage of feature binding. He suggested that this role might be to resolve ambiguity and to generate a single consistent interpretation of the perceptual input. (shrink)

A familiar and enduring controversy surrounds the question of whether our phenomenal experience “overflows” availability to cognition: do we consciously see more than we can remember and report? Both sides to this debate have long sought to move beyond naïve appeals to introspection by providing empirical evidence for or against overflow. Recently, two notable studies—Bronfman, Brezis, Jacobson, and Usher and Vandenbroucke, Sligte, Fahrenfort, Ambroziak, and Lamme —have purported to provide compelling evidence in favor of overflow. Here I explain why the (...) data from both studies are wholly consistent with a “no overflow” interpretation. Importantly, when framed purely in representational or informational terms, this “no overflow” interpretation agrees with the interpretations respectively offered by both Bronfman et al. and Vandenbroucke et al.. The difference only emerges when additional assumptions are made concerning which representations correspond to elements in consc.. (shrink)

Change blindness illustrates a remarkable limitation in visual processing by demonstrating that substantial changes in a visual scene can go undetected. Because these changes can ultimately be detected using top–down driven search processes, many theories assign a central role to spatial attention in overcoming change blindness. Surprisingly, it has been reported that change blindness can occur during blink-contingent changes even when observers fixate the changing location [O’Regan, J. K., Deubel, H., Clark, J. J., & Rensink, R. A. . Picture changes (...) during blinks: Looking without seeing and seeing without looking. Visual Cognition, 7, 191–212]. However, eye blinks produce a transient disruption of vision that is independent of any associated changes in the retinal image. We determined whether these ‘attentive blank stares’ could occur in the absence of blink-mediated visual suppression. Using a flicker change-blindness paradigm we confirm that despite direct attentive fixations, obvious scene changes often remain undetected. We conclude that change detection involves object or feature based attentional mechanisms, which can be ‘misdirected’ despite the allocation of spatial attention to the position of the change. (shrink)

We used a new method called “Ghost-in-the-Machine” (GiM) to investigate social interactions with a robotic bartender taking orders for drinks and serving them. Using the GiM paradigm allowed us to identify how human participants recognize the intentions of customers on the basis of the output of the robotic recognizers. Specifically, we measured which recognizer modalities (e.g., speech, the distance to the bar) were relevant at different stages of the interaction. This provided insights into human social behavior necessary for the development (...) of socially competent robots. When initiating the drink-order interaction, the most important recognizers were those based on computer vision. When drink orders were being placed, however, the most important information source was the speech recognition. Interestingly, the participants used only a subset of the available information, focussing only on a few relevant recognizers while ignoring others. This reduced the risk of acting on erroneous sensor data and enabled them to complete service interactions more swiftly than a robot using all available sensor data. We also investigated socially appropriate response strategies. In their responses,the participants preferred to use the same modality as the customer’s requests, e.g., they tended to respond verbally to verbal requests. Also, they added redundancy to their responses, for instance by using echo questions. We argue that incorporating the social strategies discovered with the GiM paradigm in multimodal grammars of human–robot interactions improves the robustness and the ease-of-use of these interactions, and therefore provides a smoother user experience. (shrink)

Past research has repeatedly documented the close relationship between visual attention and awareness. Most recently, research exploring change blindness, inattentional blindness, repetition blindness, and the attentional blink has converged on the conclusion that attention to one aspect of a scene or event may lead to a highly circumscribed awareness of only the specific information attended, while other information, even that which is spatially or temporally nearby can go completely unnoticed. In the present report, we extend these observations to the dynamic (...) allocation of attention during a well-structured meaningful event. In two experiments, subjects viewed brief videos of simple events and were told to pay close attention to them. During the events, an unexpected disruption consisting of a brief low spatial frequency motion field occurred. Despite intensive questioning and opportunities for recognition, the majority of subjects reported no awareness of 200, 400, or 600 ms disruptions. In a second experiment, blank-screen disruptions were added, and these resulted in no increase in detection. We conclude that visual attention may result in far more transitory awareness of visual information than previously appreciated. (shrink)